If Congresspersons have questions on whether impeachment proceedings against members of this administration who are known to or are highly suspected of having committed crimes should be brought up on impeachment charges, perhaps some of those questions can be aired here. For members of Congress who need reminding about their duties and responsibilities, let us recall Barbara Jordan, speaking to the Nation on the Nixon impeachment.
[Note: Also seen on Daily Kos.]
Congressman/woman, is your faith in the Constitution shaky? Do you shrink before exercising the power it devolves upon you? Ms Jordan offers this,
My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total. And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution.
Congressman/woman, do you remain unsure what your rightful power is as a third branch of government? Is your reason for NOT pursuing impeachment proceedings a belief that to do so is a waste of time because there aren’t enough votes for a conviction?
It is wrong, I suggest, it is a misreading of the Constitution for any member here to assert that for a member to vote for an article of impeachment means that that member must be convinced that the President should be removed from office. The Constitution doesn’t say that. The powers relating to impeachment are an essential check in the hands of the body of the legislature against and upon the encroachments of the executive.
Do you shirk impeachment because, never having engaged in such an activity before, you are unsure what its purpose is?
We know the nature of impeachment. We’ve been talking about it awhile now. It is chiefly designed for the President and his high ministers to somehow be called into account. It is designed to “bridle” the executive if he engages in excesses. “It is designed as a method of national inquest into the conduct of public men.” “It is designed as a method of national inquest into the conduct of public men.”
Do you believe impeachment is a futile approach for questioning the so-far unquestioned power of the Unitary Executive?
“It is designed as a method of national inquest into the conduct of public men.” The framers confided in the Congress the power if need be, to remove the President in order to strike a delicate balance between a President swollen with power and grown tyrannical, and preservation of the independence of the executive.
Are you confused as to when impeachment is called for, having witnessed its shamefully ridiculous misuse against Bill Clinton?
It [the Federal Convention of 1787] limited impeachment to high crimes and misdemeanors and discounted and opposed the term “maladministration.” “It is to be used only for great misdemeanors,” so it was said in the North Carolina ratification convention.
For you, is impeachment “impractical”? Do you think it is too late in Bush’s term for him to face impeachment? That he should be let slide because he’ll be gone (good riddance) in 500 days or so?
“No one need be afraid” — the North Carolina ratification convention — “No one need be afraid that officers who commit oppression will pass with immunity.”
Are you afraid of what the people will think if you initiate impeachment proceedings? Are you afraid Republicans will accuse you of attempting a cheap political trick and wasting time in the face of pressing congressional business?
Common sense would be revolted if we engaged upon this process for petty reasons. Congress has a lot to do: Appropriations, Tax Reform, Health Insurance, Campaign Finance Reform, Housing, Environmental Protection, Energy Sufficiency, Mass Transportation. Pettiness cannot be allowed to stand in the face of such overwhelming problems. So today we are not being petty. We are trying to be big, because the task we have before us is a big one.
Do you worry about sufficient grounds for impeachment? Isn’t the president’s commutation of Libby’s sentence, the result of a fair trial, a unanimous guilty verdict, and a considered sentencing a criminal override of the rule of law? Isn’t the president’s stonewalling in providing documents that may incriminate his attorney general in conducting illegal politicization within the DoJ abetting further crimes of a that nature?
Impeachment criteria: James Madison, from the Virginia ratification convention. “If the President be connected in any suspicious manner with any person and there be grounds to believe that he will shelter him, he may be impeached.”
Congressman/woman, do you need reminding of who you represent? Are you confused about protecting their interests, especially pertaining to protecting the right of the people to vote in free and legal elections, when you vacillate over whether to or whether not to impeach?
Justice Story: “Impeachment” is attended — “is intended for occasional and extraordinary cases where a superior power acting for the whole people is put into operation to protect their rights and rescue their liberties from violations.” (snip) The Carolina ratification convention impeachment criteria: those are impeachable “who behave amiss or betray their public trust.”
Do you think that executive power trumps legislative power? That a president, or his vice-president, or other high officers, can run things ‘their own way,’ even going beyond the impeding legalities that apply to ordinary citizens because they say that their job of defending our Nation requires them to use extra-legal methods in the interests of saving time and getting results?
James Madison again at the Constitutional Convention: “A President is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution.” The Constitution charges the President with the task of taking care that the laws be faithfully executed, and yet the President has counseled his aides to commit perjury, willfully disregard the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, conceal surreptitious entry, attempt to compromise a federal judge, while publicly displaying his cooperation with the processes of criminal justice.
Congressman/woman, there is really only one question you should concern yourselves with in deciding whether or not to initiate impeachment proceedings. AND NO OTHER.
Has the President committed offenses, and planned, and directed, and acquiesced in a course of conduct which the Constitution will not tolerate?
In asking that question, you will achieve the only requisite perspective on the issue of impeaching George W. Bush, Richard Bruce Cheney, and Alfredo Gonzales. You will see your way clearly to responding in the only right way. You will have your view of America and the Constitutional rights and responsibilities of those in your office. . .from the Mountaintop where Barbara Jordan once stood, “sharing the pain of this inquiry.”
